Breaking off from my working practice to move both house and studio turned out to be a double edged sword. On the one hand (or edge, if I’m to stick with the metaphor) the break was probably well timed. I was producing a lot of work and fairly consistently, but I knew in my heart of hearts it wasn’t work by which I’d like ultimately to be judged. On the other hand/sword/slice-of-bread the break allowed me to let in those little demons of negativity once more – demons who encouraged me to slap paint around with abandon and to use bright colour and forget all of my subtle-colourist principles and instincts. This inevitably led to a mini-depression, during which I fantasised about giving up painting altogether and going to work in a busy restaurant kitchen (for which I have little or no experience I hasten to add). I then spent the next week or so trying to rein myself in and re-establish the foundation of common sense and painterly beliefs that I’d worked hard to gather over the 6 months prior to moving.
And now to the present. Fresh from my min-crisis, I’m reborn with the belief (only the paintings I produce over the coming weeks will tell) that I have moved on a step from the work I was producing before the move. I now have greater clarity of vision and am more sensitive to my artistic needs, beliefs and sensibilities. I think that I’ve identified why I found the previous works so lacking and have a focussed plan of how to create the next body of works to address those short-comings. If I can maintain that focus (and writing this blog is partly to help remind myself of what I had planned) then the following paintings should be pretty special.
Painting can be such a tortuous process.
